President Obama is betting the economy and your children’s future on his dream that unproven energy ideas based on biofuels, solar, wind, and batteries not yet invented, will replace oil, coal and natural gas to ensure his place in history, as the visionary who “transformed” America.

The media didn’t pay much attention to Secretary of Energy Stephen Chu’s recent testimony to a House of Representatives hearing. But he disclosed what many already believed, that a lower gas price is not a goal of President Obama’s energy policy. The 90 minute video is on C-SPAN.

In his opening statement Secretary Chu chanted the Obama Administration’s talking points formulated to calm the American listener:

To promote economic growth and strengthen our security President Obama has called for an all of the above strategy that develops every source of American energy. The President wants to fuel our economy with domestic energy resources while increasing our ability to compete in the clean energy race.

Secretary Chu told the Congressmen that the Administration hopes to decrease America’s dependence on imported oil, but not by permitting producers to increase the supply of domestic oil, natural gas and coal, which America has in great abundance. Instead, the Administration is focused on, in Chu’s words, “next generation bio fuels, advanced battery and electric vehicle technologies.”

One of the Committee members, Rep. Alan Nunnelee (R-Miss.) asked some pointed questions.

Congressman Nunnelee:

Before you were nominated you were quoted as saying, “somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” I can’t look at motivations, I have to look at results and under this Administration the price of gasoline has doubled.

While gas is over $4 in Mississippi the price in Europe is $8 a gallon. The people of Mississippi can’t be here so I have to speak for them…And it appears to me that this administration continues to drag its feet on oil exploration on fossil fuel development and recovery. How do you Respond to that?

Secretary Chu

Well, I think absolutely we should be judged on what we are doing. I should be judged on my track record…we will do everything in our power and we agree that there is great suffering when the price of gasoline increases in the United states, so we are very concerned about this. And, as I’ve repeatedly said, in the Department of Energy what we’re trying to do is diversify our energy supply of transportation [sic] so we have cost effective means – natural gas is great so we’re pushing natural gas for transportation – batteries, bio fuels, so these are the things we are doing – so we are very focused on that – because we understand it has an economic impact on all Americans

Congressman Nunnelee:

But is the overall goal to to get our price down?

Secretary Chu astounding answer:

No.

The overall goal is to decrease our dependency on oil, to build and strengthen our economy and to decrease our dependency on oil….we think that if you consider all these policies including energy efficiency we think we can go a long way to becoming less dependent on oil and diversifying our supply and we’ll help the American economy and the American c0onsumers.

“Diversifying our supply” means the government will continue to use a combination of subsidies and mandates to force alternative, higher priced energy sources upon us.

The following day Dr. Chu and other administration officials tried to soften the impact of his testimony with vague assurances that the President feels our pain. But in their hearts they see the current pain as acceptable, collateral damage in pursuit of the victory bluntly described by Dr. Chu back in 2008:

Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe

What are those “levels in Europe?” About $8 per gallon.

The strategy is clear: President Obama and his supporters believe continuously increasing fossil fuel prices resulting from government imposed restrictions on supply will make their favored alternatives more price competitive.

We hear from the environmental Left that even if increased production were allowed it wouldn’t lower prices immediately, because it takes two or three years to explore and drill for new oil. True enough. But that’s the same rebuttal they offered to justify restrictions two years ago and five years ago and ten years ago. And, if President Obama’s policies remain in place we’ll hear it again when we wake up to $6.50 gas in March of 2014.

[…] this really the Change, those of you who voted for Obama were looking for? Soaring Gas Prices: Result of Wilfull Obama Policy: […]

SenateStaff on
March 4th, 2012

Again, for the second time this blog shows ignorance of basic economics. To the uninformed oil looks cheaper than Clean energy because oil companies are subsidized and don’t have to pay all costs. They don’t have to pay the cost of polluting our environment with emissions from burning fossil fuels. Those costs are born as externalities in the form of higher health care costs and degraded water supplies.

AzTex on
March 4th, 2012

Dr. Chu’s position has been distorted by extremist politics. He is saying that as modern, 21st century energy sources continue to come on line they will cause demand for oil to go down which will bring the price down. Eventually the market for dirty energy from oil will completely disappear. Dr. Chu is positioning us at the forefront of the clean energy revolution. Conservative extremists like the guy who writes this junk blog would push us to the rear, playing catch up to the rest of the world.

Obama deserves credit for rising above the political winds of the day and allowing Dr. Chu, one of the most brilliant scientific minds of our age to direct our energy policy toward a future of sustainable, clean, energy.

Extremist tea party thugs now dominate what was once a decent opposition Republican party. They trying to drive out reason and bring in fear to get votes. Too bad the tea party chumps don’t know the real masters of Repubican party are the transnational corporate interests.

Drew on
March 5th, 2012

And now, back to reality. The 2012 Energy Information Administration report is out. This annual report is the bible for energy projections on consumption, production and price.

To provide some sobriety to a couple comments made. Coal, oil and natural gas currently provide 83% of energy needs today, while renewables, which include wood, waste, biomass hydro, solar and wind comprises 7%. Let’s be charitable and say that solar and wind are half, the forecast for 2035′ and that’s 25 years, projects the 7% going to 11%. Hence, wind and solar might increase their share from 3.5% to 5.5%. That’s minuscule. Dr Chu may have a brilliant mind, but AzTex has quite evidently a weak mind, because this is like pissing in the ocean.

Interestingly, if you look at the underlying assumptions on industrial and transportation consumption they are quite optimistic. Said another way, that projected increase in solar and wind share may be overstated.

Lastly, for all this effort, total CO2 emissions are expected to be 3% higher at the end of the forecast period. So if you are foolish enough to believe in manmade global warming as a significant problem, you are worse off at the end of the forecast vs today. And world oil prices are expected to be $150 per barrel in the reference case.

On second thought, dr Chu looks like the most impotent fool on the earth, excepting one commenter anyway.

Ralphy on
March 5th, 2012

The talking heads say speculators are to blame for high gas prices. Maybe I’m wrong but that doesn’t make any sense to me. In the futures markets someone has to take the opposite side of every position so for every speculator who bets on a price increase another one bets on a price decrease, or at least on the price staying the same.

Maybe I’m wrong but it looks to me like speculators are easy to blame because they don’t have any representatives in the media and most people don’t know how the markets work.

Drew on
March 5th, 2012

Ralph gets the gold star of the day. That’s correct. Now, we need to temper that. Prices of securities or commodities can rise or fall based upon the weight of the betting.

But you are correct, the notion that speculators can single handily drive a price beyond a ” fair” price is preposterous because the opposite side of the bet would attenuate it.

How much you wanna bet AzTex can’t figure this out? Too busy fooling with his knee pads……